


Sidekick

by Lunik



Category: Bedlam (TV)
Genre: Bromance, Crack, Gen, Ghosts in mirrors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-22
Updated: 2011-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-22 23:09:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunik/pseuds/Lunik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jed doesn't think he needs a sidekick. Ryan plans to educate him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sidekick

Jed bent low over the sink, letting the cold water run off his face. It was a habit that you picked up, sharing a bathroom with the kind of person who was equally likely to wish you good morning and to bite your earlobe off – if you stayed low with your eyes screwed shut, the crazies were less likely to bother you. He ran a hand over his face as he straightened and picked his toothbrush out of the other toothbrushes in the cup. He smiled a little. Sharing a bathroom again. Oh, well, at least this time he was the only crazy.

He opened the mirrored door of the cabinet, dug inside for his toothpaste (the whitening kind, for sensitive teeth, spearmint flavoured with a stripe. He hadn’t been allowed to pick his own toothpaste at The Hospital) and set to brushing his teeth. Today was pretty empty. Maybe he’d go job hunting. Maybe sit home watching DVDs with Molly.

He shut the cabinet door, and as the mirror swung back into place a grotesque image appeared behind his reflection. A face white as death, horribly stretched and distorted. Jed shrieked with manly terror and spun around. Then he fell down.

“Aha!” cried the apparition. “I knew it!” It reached up and _pulled off its face_ and then Jed’s thudding heart informed him that the awful, awful ghost may in fact have been Ryan in a Scream mask.

“I knew you’d look round.” the Ryan in a Scream mask was saying.

Jed asked him, “I- buh- wha?”

“I said, I knew you’d turn round.” Ryan said reasonably.

“You… Wha?” said Jed, less reasonably because, well. Ryan in a Scream mask?

Ryan was looking at him with a disapproving smile, the kind that said, _okay, we can fix this._ “You saw me in the mirror and the first thing you did was turn around. You really are sort of a rubbish ghost hunter.”

Jed said, “I… You- Scream mask?”

“It was cheap.” Ryan threw the mask over his shoulder. “You should probably swallow that toothpaste, by the way, you’re starting to look rabid.”

Jed’s mouth reminded him that it was full of toothpaste. He pulled himself back up to the sink to rinse his mouth. Spitting, he tried to turn back and figure out how to react to flatmates who buy terrifying masks because they are cheap, but Ryan’s hand landed on his shoulder and stopped him.

“No no no, look in the mirror.” Ryan smiled at him over his reflection’s shoulder. Jed glared. Of all the people he wanted to smile at in the mirror of a morning, Ryan wasn’t one of them. Maybe Moll, a little tiny bit, but definitely not Ryan. All right, probably not Ryan. Because of the Scream mask.

“I have been doing some research.”

“…into Scream masks?”

“Yes!” Ryan beamed. “I mean no. Not Scream masks. Ghosts!”

Jed suppressed the heartfelt groan. Ryan probably meant well. He turned again, but Ryan’s hand guided him back around to look in the mirror.

“See, the bathroom is where you’re most likely to find a ghost!” he said.

“…really?”

“Yep. Because of the mirror.”

“I don’t know if that’s how it…”

“Where else does a ghost get the chance to appear behind you and scare you like this?”

“Um…”

“But!” Ryan held up a finger, behind Jed’s back. “When you turn around, the ghost is always gone. I’m surprised you didn’t know that. How long have you been seeing ghosts?”

Jed grunted noncommittally. He was beginning to understand that ‘research’ should be taken to mean ‘spent a night watching japanese horror films and reading urban legends on the internet’. But he was pretty sure that all the hardcore paranormal investigation websites got their information the same way, so he couldn’t complain.

“You turn around and they vanish.” Ryan continued. “And then you’ve lost your chance, haven’t you?”

“Have I?” Jed looked back over his shoulder, and Ryan reached out and turned his head back to the mirror. Jed rolled his eyes.

“To talk to the ghost. Find out what it wants, figure out how to get it to move on. Okay.” He straightened. “Let’s practise. We’ll leave the mask where it is.” A quick glance showed that it had landed in the bath, but Jed quickly looked back in the mirror. Ryan beamed. “You be you, I’ll be the ghost. How are you today, Jed?”

Jed stared at him over his own shoulder in the glass. Ryan nodded encouragingly. “I’m… fine. How are you?”

Ryan-in-the-mirror shrugged. “Oh, not so great. I feel like rising from my grave to do some terrible harm to innocent people.”

Jed groaned.

—

Jed rolled out of bed a little before dawn. The doctors at The Hospital had been very pleased when he’d stopped talking about his nightmares. It had all been very self congratulatory, so he’d never bothered telling them that the nightmares still happened. Let them have their victories and they’d leave him alone. More or less.

Bathroom. Mouthwash. Get rid of the taste of fear, it wasn’t real anyway. He stared at himself in the mirror, waiting for his heart to steady itself. Leaned back to gargle the stinging mint taste around the back of his throat, then forward to spit it into the sink. There. All gone.

Then he straightened and it was all back. In the mirror, a face with more teeth than mouth to put them in, and wide, wide, staring eyes. He turned so fast his ankles tied themselves in knots. “Gah!” he choked out, “Christ on a motherfu- god damn it, Ryan!”

Ryan dragged the mask off, and held a finger to his lips. “Shh!” he whispered, “You’ll wake the girls up!”

“ _I’ll_ wake them-?”

“And you turned around again! Did you forget what we talked about yesterday?”

Jed stared. “That’s a new mask!” he said accusatorially. “Was that one cheap, too?”

Ryan looked down at the mask in his hands. “I got them on eBay. I quite like this one.”

Jed thought that the Scream mask had been scarier. He was not going to say that. He frowned. “Wait, are there more?”

“Maybe.” said Ryan neutrally. “But you’re still turning around. You lost a ghost, and now it’s going to try and kill someone. Nothing for it.” he looked regretful. “I’m going to have to try behavioural conditioning.”

He dropped the mask, reached out and flicked Jed, hard, in the nose. Jed didn’t say anything, because really, what did you say to that? Ryan stooped to pick up the latex monstrosity, and then sat himself on the side of the bath. “So.” he said. “Are you okay? It’s very early in the morning. I didn’t think anyone else was still up.”

Jed, nursing his reddening nose, realised that he couldn’t even remember what the nightmare was about.

—

There were definitely more than two masks. The Freddy Krueger mask got Jed flicked in the face, as did the blood soaked skull mask. The morning Ryan tried the demon mask, he surprised Jed shaving and Jed almost cut his throat open. Ryan provided him with toilet tissue and graciously refrained from flicking his nose. The gimp mask made Jed wonder about Ryan’s eBay source, but it had the useful side effect that Jed was laughing too hard to turn around.

By the time Ryan reached the mask that looked a little like a jack-o-lantern from hell, Jed had learned to stand still.

—

Jed was washing his hands (and if he spent a little longer doing it than people who had never visited The Hospital, he pretended not to notice) and having a conversation with a melted-face demon creature.

In the mirror, of course.

“You know, there’s one thing you didn’t think of… What if I see a real ghost in the mirror one morning and think it’s you? It might get offended and drown me in my mouthwash.”

“But I aam a real ghoost, Jeedd!” said Ryan’s voice. “If you turn aroound, I’ll be gooone!”

Jed hid a smile. “Right, of course.”

The door was ajar, so obviously Molly didn’t knock, choosing to just walk straight through in the tradition of flatmates everywhere who will _know better next time._

“Hey, have either of you two seen my-” She stopped.

Ryan was wearing one of Kate’s giant beach towels as a robe, and had his hands raised, wiggling his fingers ominously. He had just started into one of his most terrifying ‘ooOOoo’s.

Jed did not look away from the mirror.

Molly’s face was unreadable for a minute. Then she rolled her eyes. “Why don’t we have more than one bathroom?”

The door clicked firmly shut behind her. Jed caught Ryan’s eye in the mirror (or where he thought Ryan’s eye might be behind the melty rubber) and turned off the tap.

“Oh, good,” he said cheerfully, “now I’m not the only one that Moll thinks is crazy.”

“Not true. She doesn’t know it’s me under this mask.”

“I think she’ll guess.”

The melty demon looked dejected. “Should I take it off?”

“That’d be a good idea, yes.” Ryan ran a hand through his de-masked hair and sat on the edge of the bath, and Jed decided to risk nose-flicking and turned around to lean back on the sink.

“I just…” said Ryan, looking down at the demon mask, “I’m really not interested in being the useless sidekick, you know? I hated the Batman comics with Robin in them.” he put on a nasal American accent. “Holy pointless character, Batman!”

“I don’t think you’re a wholly pointless character.”

Ryan shot Jed a look. “So, I wanted to be a useful sidekick. I’m determined to make you a better ghost hunter.”

Jed huffed, either a laugh or a scoff, he hadn’t decided. “You know ghosts don’t look like that, right?” he nodded at the mask. “I’ve never seen a ghost that looked like a pumpkin, either.”

Ryan groaned, and Jed moved over to sit on the bathtub with him. “I’m not in the market for a sidekick, Ryan.” Ryan glanced up, and there was a brief, very brief spark of hurt in his eyes. “But I could really use a friend these days.” he paused. “I have… Only just been discharged from Hospital. I was there for a long time… And family is nice to have around, but. It means a whole lot to me that you believe me when I tell you what I’ve seen.”

“I could hardly not believe you, after what happened.”

Jed shrugged. “Kate doesn’t. Still thinks she fell asleep in the bath. Listen.” he grabbed Ryan’s shoulder, just for the physical contact. “You stop flicking me in the face, I’ll stop turning around when I see things in the mirror, and we’ll both tell Molly we never saw her come in, okay? If we stick to the story, she’ll have to believe it.”

Ryan grinned. “Does that really work?”

“Maybe this’ll be the first time.”

They both laughed. “Seems like a fair deal, then.” Ryan cleared his throat. “But, you know, as a ghost hunter, you really should put more effort into communicating with the ghosts you hunt.”

Jed let go of his shoulder. Then pushed him into the bathtub. Like friends do.


End file.
